Someone emailed that he had had an eye-opening experience as he sat with his wife and friends and talked about a crucial experience he had as a six-year-old that still troubled him.

"I vividly remember deliberately rejecting Christ and making a decision against going forward in church and yielding to Him. How painful it is that I continued to resist God for eleven years thereafter, only yielding to God for the first time when I was seventeen."

As they revisited that scene, his friends counseled him to ask Jesus where He was when he made that rejection.

He wrote, "Then I saw Him standing off to the side but stretching forth His arms with the most overwhelming flow of love and acceptance imaginable. It was then that I knew why I rejected Him. I had somehow gotten a wrong view of God. I could only see Him as a God of judgment. God was stern, demanding and angry."

Christ's compassion has nothing to do with whether we have been all we should be for Him. He loves us unconditionally and wants us to daily live with that reality.

When our daughter was a little girl and would get embarrassed, she would say, "Don't look at my face." Jesus invites us to do the opposite. "When You think I'm angry, you'll see love and acceptance if only you'll turn to Me with repentance and look in My face."

I thank You, Jesus, that I can always be confident of Your love that endures forever.